Gone was the naïve boy who always looked to decrease the death toll while keeping irrelevant things on his mind.

In his place was a man who was prepared to do almost anything to ensure that he would reach his goals.

No, not a man.

A King.

As Daneel picked up the plate of fruit beside him and started to eat, the continent started to devolve into chaos.

…

In every Kingdom, there were a few people who had committed heinous acts but were still pardoned by the government because they were too essential to the Kingdom.

These were traders or individuals who either held large amounts of wealth or were in charge of immense manpower. Having the ability to upend the kingdom itself if they wished, they lived their lives however they wanted, only taking care not to antagonize the ruler of their kingdom too much.

Kalingor was one such individual in the Kingdom of the Elves.

As a staunch supporter of the belief that elves were greater than humans in all ways, he was someone who had made it his personal mission to rid the world of the 'human plague', as he called it.

Of course, he never dared to go too far.

Whenever he found a human who wouldn't be missed, he would abduct them and store them in his dungeon from where they would never return.

The problem was that he did it so much that a few mistakes couldn't be avoided.

For example, he had once abducted the wife of a soldier in the Army, who didn't stop at anything to track her whereabouts.

When he managed to follow the signs left behind by the kidnapping to Kalingor's manor, the soldier was killed in cold blood.

Of course, the army launched an investigation, and he was found guilty.

However, due to the substantial influence he held, he was pardoned and almost all records of his crime were stricken.

He was in control of a very important Ether mine in Eldinor, and if he had been persecuted, he would definitely have used his private knowledge of the mine to collapse it in revenge.

In fact, the elf had even threatened as much, leaving the government to just fine him before letting him go.

Today, he was reminiscing about that moment and the screams of that woman he had abducted when he showed her the dead body of her loved one.

Although he had continued his activities, he was much more careful now, so there were fewer people for him to torture and kill.

Indeed, this was what he lived for now. He had become addicted to the screams, and although he still justified himself by saying that he was just ridding the continent of the worthless humans, he knew that he was only continuing because he enjoyed it too much.

Just the day before, he had hit a jackpot. He had managed to abduct an entire family who were apparently migrating from a different Kingdom, so he now had four new types of screams to listen to and enjoy.

Usually, he loved to leave them in the dark dungeon so that they would lose all hope. After that, he would go to them like a savior before crus.h.i.+ng their hopes and reveling in the look in their eyes.

However, he decided to change it up.

Walking to his dungeon, he was surprised to see that there was none of the whimpering that he usually heard when he had new victims.

There were no guards here, as he couldn't risk anyone blabbering about his acts. Hence, he conjured a globe of fire by himself.

When his eyes adjusted to the light, he stepped back with shock when he realised that there was a man in peculiar black robes standing in front of him.

The four whom he had come to torture were standing behind the man, holding their mouths shut, trying hard not to make a sound.

As they watched, the elf who had just entered the dungeon collapsed to the ground without even understanding how he had been attacked.

If they looked closer, they would have seen that a tiny blade had pierced through his neck, puncturing it and making him bleed out.

As his body was weak, and because the blade had also had some kind of poison which paralyzed him, he could only watch as the blood pooled around him.

The last thing he heard was the four words uttered by the black-robed man who bent down to his ear and said, "King Daneel sends his regards."

How the h.e.l.l had he antagonised the fearsome King of Lanthanor? Had it been found out that among some of the humans he had killed, some of them were Lanthanorians?

Alas, he would never know the answer, as he lost his life the next second.

Similar scenes occurred all over Eldinor and the Black Raven Kingdom, where influential people that regularly committed atrocious acts were a.s.sa.s.sinated.

Experts were called in to a.n.a.lyse the bodies of the dead, and they all reached one conclusion.

It was the handiwork of the a.s.sa.s.sins of the Hidden Kill Sect.

In total, the death toll had risen to 40 people, but even though the number was small, the effects were enormous.

All of these 40 had held enormous amounts of power or wealth, which were all quickly confiscated by the government even while it lamented their deaths and swore to get revenge.

This made both governments a target for immense backlash, mainly from other individuals with power who started to become afraid that it had actually been planned by the governments themselves to profit from the deaths.

The pressure started to mount, as these individuals also managed to enlist the help and support of other, more normal influential people by scaring them that they would be next.

Finally, it got to a point where the two governments couldn't ignore it anymore.

Suddenly, both of them took a shocking decision.

Eldinor and the Black Raven Kingdom declared war on the Hidden Kill Sect, and started to march to the mountain which was their base.

While the two armies set off for their destination, the entire continent watched with bated breath.

Meanwhile, the person who was responsible for all of this happening was leisurely spending his time in the Hidden Kill Sect, depleting their diminished food reserves even faster by continuously placing requests which couldn't be ignored.

If they had known that they were generously feeding the man who was responsible for making them the target of two Kingdoms in the Central Continent, they would definitely have choked with disbelief and thrown themselves off the mountain in frustration.